Tony Judt
New York’s Liberal Intellectuals Are Back at Each Other’s Throats—Buruma and Berman Slug It Out Over Political Islam
The debate, between some of New York’s most esteemed liberal thinkers—Paul Berman and Tony Judt of New York University, Mark Lilla of Columbia and Ian Buruma of Bard College—has captured the imagination of Europe. read more »
It's Official: Jewish Progressive Criticism of Israel Is Now a Movement
Let's declare what's afoot right now: it's a movement. Progressive Jews all over are denouncing the mainstream leadership's staunch support of the hateful occupation, and some of them are linking it to the U.S.'s bloody occupation of Iraq. In England, Independent Jewish Voices, a group of anti-occupation Jews (including Harold Pinter and Eric Hobsbawm) is breaking away from the mainstream organizations to show how bankrupt their lobbying position is. In Australia, Antony Loewenstein sees "dissent growing." His book My Israel Question, which I gather is even more off-the-hook than stuff I write, is to be published in the States this spring. And speaking of the States, Jewish Voice for Peace, an Oakland-based group with chapters nationwide, has lately launched a fabulous website, Muzzlewatch, dedicated to fighting the smears and threats that the lobby has always used against Jews who want to treat Palestinian Arabs with dignity. Meantime, the Union of Progressive Zionists, which brought Breaking the Silence to the U.S. last fall to describe real conditions in the West Bank to young Jews, is fighting to keep its membership on the Israel on Campus Coalition, and winning—a battle with the ZOA whose onset I reported on this blog two months back. Some Hillel groups have welcomed Breaking the Silence.
The one comment I'd add is that I give credit to progressive gentiles for helping to break open this discussion. Yes, Meretz-USA has been tireless. Norman Finkelstein has given hundreds of speeches. But Mearsheimer, Walt, and Jimmy Carter released this movement last year by embarrassing Jews with statements about the immorality of the treatment of Palestinians that were mainstreamed. They gave license to the media to write about this stuff, and have spurred progressive Jews to play their part and recover progressive voices going back to Hannah Arendt and Elmer Berger. 60 years before Walt and Mearsheimer, Rabbi Berger warned in The Jewish Dilemma about the Zionist "machine" and the ways it would transform Jewish identity and politics in the name of nationalism.
Hark! I hear the sound of the tumbrils, rumbling through the streets of northwest Washington, collecting neoconservatives.
Judt Responds to Dershowitz's Characterization: 'It Is a Lie'
"It is a lie, and implicitly defamatory (a dissolver of Israel is an anti-Zionist is an anti-semite, etc...). From Dershowitz one expects no better. But thanks to Leon [Wieseltier] it is the received reading of my text. What I actually said was that Israel cannot remain an exclusively Jewish state while aspiring to be a democracy and must, if it is to survive, become the state of all its citizens."
At Brandeis, Alan Dershowitz Snaps His Towel at Tony Judt
"Tony Judt is in favor of the complete dissolution of the state of Israel... the total dissolution of the state of Israel," said Dershowitz.
Two comments. First, that Dershowitz should bring this up shows that those who favor a single state in Palestine have gotten the issue on the agenda. Dershowitz's line is is now the talking point. Leon Wieseltier made a similar statement about Judt, with a similarly-angry tone, in the New Republic a few weeks back.
Second, Dershowitz's characterization doesn't seem fair to me; he is using eliminationist rhetoric to suggest that Judt is a kind of Nazi or antisemite, who would sweep Jews into the sea. In fact, if you read Judt's groundbreaking essay, you understand that his position is being caricatured. Yes, Dershowitz is right; Judt's vision would result in the end of the Jewish state. But his tone is pained, realistic, and even idealistic: it is a recovery of the old Judah Magnes/Elmer Berger/Anglo-American Inquiry Commission position that partition is racialist, that Arab and Jew should learn to live together in historic Palestine—because god knows, they haven't done a very good job of living with partition. read more »
For another point of view on this, read Elik Alhanan's two-state position (near the end of this long post). Meantime, below is an excerpt of Judt's piece:
Tony Judt on Harry Lyme and Other Intellectuals
1. Television has greatly narrowed the freedom of the intellectual to do his job and "disturb the public peace." 100 years ago, the French intellectual Julien Benda could stand up against the establishment for Alfred Dreyfus "because he was innocent... in the name of universal values, not particular interests." But that moment is over. Benda and others were given a platform by the rise of mass literacy in the 1880s; they were then disempowered by the rise of television in the 1970s. In that short 90 years, "educated elites had a mass literate audience." No longer. Today newspapers and foundations are not willing to support views "that make them uncomfortable." read more »
2. Intellectuals are now in four spots. 1. Pundits. 2. Thinktanks. 3. Investigative journalists (like Gideon Levy and Anna Politkovskaya). 4. the academy.
Tony Judt Says It Is Becoming 'Normal' to Have Conversations About Israel's Failings
Eight or ten years ago, the prof used to hit a wall when he brought up criticisms of Israel (where the English-born Jew had lived on a kibbutz in the '60s). More recently he was told that the topic was "untouchable" and at the very most he might discuss it "among consenting Jews—but not with goyim."
"But what seems to me the case is that if you keep pushing, if you insist there at least be a discussion of the Mearsheimer Walt paper... even a discussion about the failure to discuss it, something does change. And it seems to me there's a shift."
Just as racist speech has been delegitimized in the U.S. through a type of licensing process, criticisms of Israel are now being legitimized. "Some public space has been opened up for that conversation." Yes, the conversation still gets pushed down. But it gets harder to push it down—"making it normal to talk about these things." Hosanna.
Ali Abunimah on One State in Israel/Palestine
2. The "Peace process" is an industry that spends billions of dollars on the same idea over and over again with no clear results. "There is a fantasy of separation, that the other side can be made to disappear, either behind a wall or through the existence of a Palestinian state." read more »
3. Some Zionists in the 20s and 30s were in favor of a state that was Arab and Jewish.
Letters
To the Editor: read more »
Letters
Letters
Letters
Wieseltier's (Kabbalist) Arrogance
A few points:
—The piece underscores the fact that the media failed to cover a hugely significant event (the Cooper Union Debate). Wieseltier says that he understands that the moderator Anne-Marie Slaughter refused to engage the question of whether the original LRB paper was antisemitic. I was there. She specifically asked that question at the start. It was openly debated. How unfortunate that a serious publication cannot even get this basic point right, because the author is dealing with hearsay.
—Wieseltier tries to dismiss these ideas by saying that they are tk. He is saying, They're echoing the Protocols of Zion, so there are going to be pogroms. This is a form of name calling, and it keeps people from going near the questions. But the questions are just too important, and in the end journalists and writers should deal with facts. When Judt said that the New York Times required him to identify himself as a Jew before he could write a support of the paper, and when Rashid Khalidi said that he rarely gets to speak about Palestinian issues in a mainstream forum, they were both speaking about the taboo that continues to exist on this subject because of, because of—let's be straight about this, Jewish power in the discourse, and the fear of offending Jews. I've dealt with this from editors too long to try and dissimulate about it. When Judt spoke in the Observer last week about Jewish influence and power, he was speaking openly and honestly.
—The stunning thing about the debate, in retrospect, is that when it was done, no Jews were murdered in the streets of the East Village. At least not on the north side of Cooper Union. I should stop joking. The stunning thing was that 900 people entered a hall with diverse opinions, some of them called out abuse and mockery during the debate, but not many. The seven men and woman on stage exchanged ideas without being muzzled or bitch-slapped
Judt at War
Judt at War
New York World
New York World
The Israel Lobby Influences, Er, Speaks Reason to, the Polish Consulate
Interesting that anyone who is critical of Israel's regrettable policies toward its neighbors, and its overreliance on the U.S. in maintaining that posture, is said to be "hostile to the Jewish state."
Also interesting that The Sun advertises itself—I bought a copy this morning— "100,000 Copies a day to New York City's Most Influential Readers." A similar boast to the claim by Sun owner Roger Hertog's Manhattan Institute (which like the Sun is dedicated in some large part to insulating Israel from criticism), that it is turning "Intellect Into Influence." If anyone else talked about influence this much, they'd be accused of rewriting the protocols of the elders of Zion. Once again supporting Walt and Mearsheimer's point: the lobby brags about its power till you call them on it, and then it howls antisemitism.
The Great Debate at Cooper Union Last Night
The debate was diffuse. It had few dramatic moments. There were six debaters with five different points of view, and the three men positing the existence of the lobby had not coordinated their points ahead of time and so were sorting out differences on stage. My friend Scott McConnell of the American Conservative said that he missed the great moment, the climactic clash, then reflected that maybe this is something that documentaries manage to create after the fact.
Yet: No one could leave the hall unconvinced that there is an Israel lobby. The quarrel was over scope and character. If the Israel lobby is the elephant in the room of American politics, here were six blind men each naming a different part of it they had felt in the dark. Well actually, four blind men. The three positing the existence of the lobby were joined by Shlomo Ben-Ami, from the other side, in a spirit of intellectual vigor and openness. All four speakers added to the audience's understanding. The other 2, Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross, longtime elephant-fattener-uppers, were determined to show the audience that the elephant was a hamster. They failed.
The debate belonged to Tony Judt. He arrived late to the hall in a turtleneck—everyone else was in ties—and might have been Mariano Rivera, for his confidence and dispatch. He was the most imaginative speaker, and imagination is required when you are describing a King kong sasquatch no one has seen and whose wranglers say doesn't exist. When Shlomo Ben-Ami and Martin Indyk said that John Mearsheimer was antisemitic for speaking of a collection of Jews who influence policy, Judt demolished them by quoting Arthur Koestler when he became an anticommunist and said that Just because idiots and bigots share some of his views doesn't discredit the views. The job of the social scientist is to describe the true conditions of society; are these statements accurate or not? That is the only issue. I'm paraphrasing. Judt was way more eloquent.
Judt's second great moment was when he accused Indyk of being "faux-naive" —a civilized way of saying, You're lying—when Indyk kept saying that the lobby was one small factor in an American president's exertions of power. Here again, he used his imagination. Because when you're talking about something about which there is very little information, and those who know something about it are trying to deny its existence, you need imagination. Anyway, Judt described the real exercise of power. He said that when a small state defied an American president, and the president wanted to do something about it, he had a great number of seen and unseen ways of compelling that state to fall into line, all sorts of bullying and pressure and fury. None of these had been deployed in Israel's case, and lo and behold the settlements had continued to expand, over four decades... Again I'm paraphrasing. Judt also got the last word of the night when he explained to a hungry audience that knew in its bones it has been deprived, that this discussion was an astoundingly rare one, and mind you it was organized by the London Review of Books. Thus he gave the audience a real sense of how the U.S. discourse/policy works, which is what the evening was after all fumbling towards.
The most resonant moment of the debate was Judt's, too. He pointed out that when he had endorsed the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis, in an article for an unnamed major North American newspaper, he was asked by the editors whether he is Jewish, and told to stick that fact in the article. (Otherwise they couldn't publish it, was implicit or explicit, I'll have to check my tape). The newspaper—obviously—was the New York Times, in which Judt's op-ed taking Walt/Mearsheimer's side, appeared last April, as I recall, to stunning effect. I say resonant, and damning: Let's consider the lesson of this story: You can only speak out on this issue if you're Jewish? Oh my god, how did we get here...
The other three intellectuals' knowledge was more limited. John Mearsheimer deserves the greatest credit of all for breaking the seal on this discussion. But his actual knowledge of the lobby is drawn from reports of people who have seen Kong in the jungle, and lived to tell. So he read from one account or another of the lobby's existence, and its function in pushing for the Iraq war. Living in Chicago, he lacks intimate knowledge of its workings. His best moment came when he said that the U.S. ought to put pressure on Israel to come into line on matters that are important to us and if it fails to do so, or chooses a different course, the U.S. and Israel "should go their separate ways." This was a clean and bracing view of the relations of states. While ideal, in a realistic way, it certainly describes the usual behavior of the U.S. when a small state defies it on a critical question. E.g., the settlements. And the absence of democracy in the West Bank. We could have frozen those settlements with a wave of the hand...
Rashid Khalidi was the emotional life of the debate. He spoke of the lobby in more sweeping terms than Mearsheimer; he conveyed in a way no one else was able the ways in which the pro-Palestinian view is suppressed in the American scene. He got off the best line of the debate. His neighbor Dennis Ross's mike wasn't working. Khalidi passed him his own. "This is the first time that a Palestinian has ever enabled the Israeli side to narrate..." he said, in so many words. Laughter. And after that the audience waited on his words.
Enough for now. It was a fabulous night. We all left improved. The London Review of Books had extended the boundaries of knowledge, and freedom.
Tony Judt on the Collapse of the Liberals
In today's America, neo-conservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig-leaf. There really is no other difference between them.
Judt traces the malady in part to its obvious source, a liberal "blind spot" about Israel.
Historically, liberals have been unsympathetic to 'wars of choice' when undertaken or proposed by their own government. War, in the liberal imagination (and not only the liberal one), is a last resort, not a first option. But the United States now has an Israeli-style foreign policy and America's liberal intellectuals overwhelmingly support it.
Apart from Judt's intellectual leadership, the piece seems to me remarkable on two points. First, it lists New Yorker editor David Remnick in the ranks of those Judt calls "useful idiots." Which is very gutsy for a writer to do. Second, he describes all of Israel's wars with the exception of the Yom Kippur war as wars "of choice." '67? That, too. Even gutsier.
NYT's Bob Herbert Runs for the Moral Daylight
The piece echoes other critiques of Israel-U.S. relations in the last few months: the Walt-Mearsheimer bombshell on the Israel lobby, and Tony Judt's attack in Haaretz on "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up."
Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal.
The shock is that Bob Herbert is now saying something along these lines on the Times Op-Ed page, a place given to Tom Friedman's explanations of all Israel's choices and David Brooks's construction of camouflaged bunkers for fleeing neoconservatives. I admire Herbert's courage and hope he stays on message. Many Americans are confused and disturbed right now, and share his instincts. Herbert has done what a columnist should do, and told them how to think.
None Dare Call It Censorship
the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature. The social transformations of the country - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from the outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one "understands" it and everyone is "against" it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take offense and quick to give it. Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal.
The piece generated enormous comment in the Israeli daily. Then yesterday it was published in the Financial Times in England. A provocative argument by an eminent professor (himself Jewish), which includes an extensive passage about American opinion of Israel—has it been published in the United States? I emailed Judt to ask him.
Yes, we did try to place it in the US. I'm not sure I should publish the names of the outlets that passed on it, because in a couple of cases the editor in question would have liked to take it but for the usual considerations. But you could correctly write that various US periodicals (weeklies, monthlies) were asked and declined. It is, by the way, about to appear in Switzerland and Spain.
The Swiss, the Spanish, the English and the Israelis themselves are capable of hearing this argument. Not Americans. For "the usual considerations." If Israel is the country that hasn't grown up, we're the parent who's in denial.
More on the Effects of Mearsheimer-Walt Paper
The fact is that the disastrous Iraq invasion and its aftermath are beginning to engineer a sea-change in foreign policy debate here in the U.S. It is becoming clear to prominent thinkers across the political spectrum - from erstwhile neo-conservative interventionists like Francis Fukuyama to hard-nosed realists like Mearsheimer - that in recent years the United States has suffered a catastrophic loss of international political influence and an unprecedented degradation of its moral image. The country's foreign undertakings have been self-defeating and even irrational. There is going to be a long job of repair ahead, above all in Washington's dealings with economically and strategically vital communities and regions from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. And this reconstruction of the country's foreign image and influence cannot hope to succeed while U.S. foreign policy is tied by an umbilical cord to the needs and interests (if that is what they are) of one small Middle Eastern country of very little relevance to America's long-term concerns - a country that is, in the words of the Mearsheimer/Walt essay, a strategic burden: "A liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states." That essay is thus a straw in the wind - an indication of the likely direction of future domestic debate here in the U.S. about the country's peculiar ties to Israel.
